Living In The Land Of Nightmares
by just drifting
Summary: Echo had asked, "Hey, Dom, why was your nightmare to do with the NSA? If that was where you worked, shouldn't it be your safe haven instead?"


Echo had asked, "Hey, Dom, why was your nightmare to do with the NSA? If that was where you worked, shouldn't it be your safe haven instead?"

In all the confusion, the guns, saving Priya and Anthony, confronting Clyde and getting them out, he hadn't had a chance to answer her. But, if he had, he thinks he'd say something like:

"Yeah, and? You worked for the Dollhouse, didn't you?"

To which she'd no doubt reply, "But I didn't do that willingly."

And he'd look at her hard and say, "And you assume I did?"

His childhood hadn't been all that abnormal. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Probably the most clichéd of all family stories.

His father, a builder, and his mother, a housewife. They weren't the richest of folks, but they didn't starve either. Still, his parents had always dreamed of something...more. So they pushed him and his siblings. Never a day off school, no break or rest until they'd finished all their homework and had studied for every subject, friends only on Sundays, home by nine every night... His siblings revelled in it. They thrived under the pressure to perform. They'd come home beaming with tests and assignments proudly displaying the 'A+' sign, and Laurence would slink in behind them with his B's and C's.

It wasn't that he didn't try. It wasn't that at all. He worked hard, probably harder than both his siblings combined. It just wasn't enough. And sure, his parents tried. To love them all equally, to not pick favourites. But when you had two brilliant, beautiful children and one defect, there wasn't really much competition. Hesimply wasn't good enough. He would never live up to Sam or Lucy. So he just stopped trying.

He rebelled, as any teenage boy under too much pressure is bound to do. He skipped class, stayed out late, disobeyed. Got into booze, drugs...anything to prove to himself he wasn't worthless. He realises now that it broke his parents' hearts—that they loved him despite his shortcomings—but at the time all he felt was unwanted and betrayed. He remembers stumbling home at three am and his father waiting up to talk to him about addiction. Remembers his mother pleading with him to come home at a reasonable time or to keep trying at school. Remembers his older brother Sam attempting to "beat some sense into him" and walking around with near constant bruising and black eyes. And he remembers Lucy, climbing into his bed late at night and hugging him so tightly, murmuring about how she missed her big brother.

But it wasn't enough. The rebellion continued. He fell in with a bad crowd. Learned to fight; not only with his fists but with knives and guns as well. He stayed out for weeks at a time, only coming home for brief periods to steal food or borrow money. He missed Lucy's graduation, missed Sam's wedding, missed his father's long, fruitless battle with cancer. He thinks he turned up to the funeral drunk or high. Perhaps both.

He was twenty five with the NSA fished him out. Not unlike the Dollhouse, they'd taken him to some place he had no idea where and sat him down to talk. It wasn't the charismatic Adelle DeWitt "making him an offer" but a fat, gruff old man telling him he needed to get his life back on track and they were going to help him. But the idea was much the same: He agreed to work for them, and they'd fix him up; make him a better man. He'd make enough money to support himself _and _his family. It was what he'd always wanted, wasn't it?

He agreed. He didn't have a choice, really. And the NSA did help him. He stopped the drugs and the drink. He got a basic education. And they taught him how to put his skills—his brawn, not his brain—to use in a way that helped people, not just himself.

But, still; the similarities between the NSA and the Dollhouse are a little too real. The Dollhouse takes your body and your soul, but he's deluding himself if he believes the NSA doesn't.

Which is why, he imagines, his nightmare places him right back in that place. To see the NSA for what they really are. To get off his moral high horse and accept that if the Dollhouse is evil, then the NSA is too. And if the Dollhouse needs to be brought to justice, then so too does the NSA.

So, no, the NSA isn't his 'safe haven' as Echo had assumed. As his nightmares proved, it is his hell even more so than the Dollhouse.

But all that's a little too much to explain. So when Clyde asks, "So what was your worst nightmare?" he merely responds with:

"Hell. Same as yours."


End file.
